Germany's Far-Right Populist AfD and the 'Reichsbürger' Movement
In a Facebook video, Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, a member of the state parliament in Saxony-Anhalt and the subject of monitoring by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency BfV (Office for the Protection of the Constitution), accused authorities of “conjuring up” a Reichsbürger terror group in order to “distract citizens” from a news story of a knife attack on two school girls in Illerkirchberg, in which the suspected perpetrator is a refugee.
Berlin AfD politician Georg Pazderski tweeted that the raids were “brilliantly staged and great cinema” and that Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, “understood perfectly how to push the bloody crime of Illerkirchberg out of the headlines.”
In a similar vein, AfD parliamentarian Petr Bystron tweeted: “Coup d’état’ with 50 retirees? They wouldn’t even take San Marino’s city hall! The efforts to fabricate a ‘threat from the right’ are becoming increasingly absurd.”
New Alliances in Germany’s Far-Right Scene
Just how real the threat posed by the alleged coup plotters was remains the subject of debate.
The Reichsbürger network is said to include some 23,000 people in Germany, about 10% of which the authorities described as “orientated toward violence.”
In 2016, a member of the extremist network shot and killed a 32-year-old special forces officer during a raid on his home.
Among those arrested in last week’s raid was a soldier in the Bundeswehr’s Special Forces Command (KSK), as well as several Bundeswehr reservists.
A former police officer who was once responsible for the security of Jewish communities in Lower Saxony was also taken into custody.
Experts on right-wing extremism have long warned about the links between the Reichsbürger, the AfD, and the so-called “Querdenker” movement since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The president of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution in the eastern German state of Thuringia, Stephan Kramer, noted that so-called Reichsbürger had been seen together with members of the AfD and right-wing extremists at various demonstrations.
He also said it was striking how AfD members “blatantly [use] Reichsbürger-speak.”
AfD Moving Further to the Right?
Meanwhile, calls for increased monitoring of the AfD by the BfV are growing.
Bavaria’s State Premier Markus Söder of the center-right Christian Social Union (CSU) described the AfD as “closely interwoven” with the Reichsbürger scene.
“It is increasingly developing into a rallying point for precisely such right-wing extremist forces as well, it downright attracts them,” he said.
SPD co-leader Lars Klingbeil agreed: “The entire AfD belongs on the watch list of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, not in parliaments, courts or the civil service.”
Notably, the International Auschwitz Committee has also called for closer monitoring of the AfD in the Bundestag as a result of the raid.
“It seems bizarre and ridiculous how the AfD is trying to sneak out these days from its years of support and incitement of the ‘Reichsbürger’ milieu,” the committee’s executive vice-president, Christoph Heubner, said.
The head of the AfD in Thuringia, extreme right-winger Björn Höcke, felt it necessary last week, to advise party members to leave chat groups where talk is about the inefficacy of peaceful protest and the need to “resort to other means.” Political observers suggest that this indicates, the party really does have something to worry about in the current situation.
Helen Whittle is a DW reporter. This article, which was edited by Rina Goldenberg, is published courtesy of Deutsche Welle (DW).